"Tuppence!" he said at length, in the tone one uses instead of a spit.
This referred to the account, and Erica waited. Kindness hated accounts.
"Enough to bury me decent," he said, having reached the top of the column again.
"You don't want to be buried yet a while. Could you lend me ten pounds, do you think?"
The old man paused in licking his stub of pencil, so that the lead made a purple stain on the exposed tip of his tongue.
"So that's the way it is!" he said. "What have you been doing now?"
"I haven't been doing anything. But there are some things I might want to do. And petrol is a dreadful price."
The mention of petrol was a bad break.
"Oh, the car is it?" he said jealously.
Kindness hated Tinny. "If it's the car you want it for, why don't you ask Hart?"